


Thrice Cursed

by thisbluespirit



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Community: 100fandoms, Community: genprompt_bingo, Community: halfamoon, Curses, Ficlet, Gen, Magic, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-25 21:23:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17732915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisbluespirit/pseuds/thisbluespirit
Summary: Alice is cursed three times.





	Thrice Cursed

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Halfamoon prompt 'magic' (if a little late), 100 Fandoms prompt 7 'key' and genprompt_bingo square "Fairy Tales and Folklore."

Alice is cursed three times.

She’s cursed from before her birth; made by her mother as a short-lived key to a cage. Her father stays, makes sure she lives and saves her, but she’s a prisoner by blood-magic, left in a tower built to trap another.

Her mother travels where she pleases and adopts other waifs and strays, wrapping her tentacles around them. She calls herself Mother Gothel, and never thinks it an irony.

Alice, growing up, paints the world she cannot go to see, and makes friends of every item in her cage, waiting for a rescue that will never come until one day, she uncovers something else her mother left her. Alice has power, and she lifts the roof off her cage herself.

She finds, though, the curse of being her mother’s daughter is not so easy to escape: she carries it out with her.

~

She’s cursed again by her father. One moment of failure on his part is all it takes, and his heart is poisoned. The touch of the daughter he’s loved all these years in the tower is now death to him, and he’s cast out into the world without her. She’s left behind.

Once Alice breaks out of the tower, she wanders the many realms of magic. She can go anywhere she dreams of now; she travels to Wonderland (and other places). But wherever she goes, she can’t find a cure for her father’s heart. All she finds is trickery – until she’s woven into the edges of someone else’s story.

She can look but not touch. Alice-on-the-outside is still trapped and alone, almost as much as Alice-on-the-inside ever was. 

But hearts can be strong, too: she finds a new love to fill half of hers, and now she’s not alone even without him. She finds hope steals in with love. And in another world, she can take her father’s hand and sit by his side. It’s mixed up and imperfect and still a curse, but it’s something. Alice can appreciate that.

Curses have power and they don’t break easily, no matter how you try to end them, but the same is true of love.

~

She’s caught up in another curse, wandering lost and alone, both outside and inside. She doesn’t know her own name any more. She’s Tilly here, calls herself a crazy street rat. She’s never been anywhere outside of Seattle, barely even left Hyperion Heights. So she thinks, save on her worst days, when she almost sees so much more.

But if she’s lost, she’s also found. Love’s like that, she’s learned. The people you love will find you, if that love is true. You’ll find them. Her loves have different names in this world and come in disguise, but they’re here. Robin plucks her out of danger and into her arms, and her father is right there when she needs him.

So is her mother. Her mother is still a curse, and even worse when she wants Tilly – Alice – than when she doesn’t. She promises destiny and power and even love (Mother Gothel, much too late), but it’s not enough, not now. 

Alice chooses love; chooses Robin, who saves her; her father who’ll risk his life for her. And as the world rights itself around her, she leans her head on Robin’s shoulder and smiles, free.


End file.
